+
+
The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
+the Open311 API in the
+Norwegian FixMyStreet service.
+Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
+reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
+New Zealand version of
+FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
+me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
+municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
+Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
+FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
+to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
+issues with the Open311 specification.
+
+
One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
+handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
+reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
+receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
+able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
+it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
+I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
+of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
+submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
+Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
+methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
+know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
+some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.
+
+
A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
+which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
+run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
+each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
+should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
+here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
+category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
+as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
+it.
+
+
The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
+differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
+while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
+quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
+report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
+open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
+should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.
+
+
The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
+near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
+use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
+should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
+and range= options.
+
+
The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
+several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
+to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
+report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
+available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
+to best handle this. I've noticed
+SeeClickFix added
+latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
+solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
+Will have to investigate this a bit more.
+
+
My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
+up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
+list available via Gmane to use for
+discussions instead of only
+a forum. Oh,
+well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
+also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
+seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
+fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
+work like the free software project communities I am used to.
+
+
